Analysis

From coffee grinders to core dumps: the history of the calculator

You could tell the engineering students with the HP calculators;  their shirts pulled out of shape by carrying the bulky device in their top pockets, their tussled appearance from sleeping later and working less, their unruffled appreciation of the higher calculus.

It was a source of envy.

What happened to the robots?

Karel Čapek, a Czech, invented the concept of robots in his 1921 play Rossum’s Universal Robots.  His robots were used in factories as labourers and eventually overthrew and destroyed humanity.

From X-Rays to CT Scans to MRIs and Ultrasounds: medicine will never be the same again

Try and imagine a radical and untested new medical technique based on unexplained scientific principles becoming a mainstream tool mere weeks after being discovered.

Looking for detente in the currency wars

Top Drawer is one of the largest of the international design fairs that erupt in London, like early autumn mushrooms, in September after Europeans return to work from their summer holidays.

700 exhibitors gather to entice major contracts from the 8,000 buyers and architects who visit the show. This is no retail extravaganza.  The exhibition is all business and is not open to the general public.